Castle of the Bloated One Megadungeon....

[thebax2k]

The Bloated Blowfish is a blog by an oldschool gamer who has been recreating his dungeons and adventuring sites from the late 70's. Of interest to the Guild is the Castle of the Bloated One, a ruin?/town?/evil stronghold? that has multiple adventuring sites. Not only has Blowfish been mapping out his sites, but he has been using Google sketchup to show them in 3D. Starting in October of 2012 in his blog archive and going up to the present are the bulk of his maps. The pyramid of Lux the Mad is especially spectacular. The blog can be found at: The Bloated Blowfish

[Bogie]

Cool site, thanks

[Silverleaf]

Hiya Guys,

I signed up for this account long before I decided to create the Bloated Blowfish Blog, but I should probably change my name to match at some point. That said, many thanks thebax2k for posting the link, and for the very generous comments from both of you.

The Blog really gained it's focus and identity once I started working on recreating The Castle of the Bloated One, which comes from my haphazard collection of remaining notes/maps from my original 1978-2012 campaign. The focus for me was to ease into the recreation process by doing the maps first - and using some newer technology available PC wise to make the process easier, and simpler, but most importantly more cost and time-effective.

1) I start backwards in my (re)design process, first laying out the complex in Google Sketchup:

I like Sketchup because I can import a PNG Map (or any concept drawn on paper), scale it to match a 10 foot square grid, and then redraw the layout with very accurate tools. I've went both ways to be honest, i.e., drawing both with (and without) a map reference and the software is flexible enough to allow me to do flat overhead maps, to Isometric/Perspective style.

2) then doing the follow up common overhead map in Dungeonographer by Inkwell Ideas Dungeonographer | Just another WordPress site. I love Dungeonogrpaher because it gives me full control over laying out dungeons quickly and precisely. I would love to see a few more controls for creating shapes within the program, but the base tools (I bought the offline version) are solid.

Not trying to sound like a paid employee of either product, but they work well for me. So I'll finish by saying your mileage will vary ..

Once finished, I export as PNG from Dungeonographer (at 4 squares per inch) pull it into Paint Shop Pro and add on the simple graphic additions (if needed).

***
thebax2k,

You mentioned:

ruin?/town?/evil stronghold?

The whole environment is part of an aging Castle system, which has a small surprise in that the castle proper can fade in/out of this time and move to a different environment. A secondary site was never drawn up map wise, but I always envisioned the castle phasing in to a mostly destroyed secondary ruin - this one in the midst of a war that has swept the nation. I speak of that a bit on the blog - making hints to a Geomancer War (a class I created over 30 years specifically for my campaign) that caused this alternate area to have been decimated.

Thanks again for the shout-out both here and on my Blog, and I hope I can continue to produce.

Cheers,

[mearrin69]

That's very nice stuff there. Have some rep for those mad pyramid maps!

To what 3D formats does Sketchup output? I'd love to see these fully-textured in a 3D environment.
M

[Silverleaf]

To what 3D formats does Sketchup output? I'd love to see these fully-textured in a 3D environment.

Thanks for the rep!

From Sketchup's help site:

Sketchup Basic (the version I'm using)

You can export 3D models to other programs in several 2D and 3D formats:

Export 2D images of your models.
JPEG image (.jpg)
Portable Network Graphics (.png)
Tagged Image File (.tif)
Windows Bitmap (.bmp).
Export your files to COLLADA (.dae) format for use in a variety of different 3D programs.
Place models in Google Earth. You can place SketchUp models in Google Earth by using the "Place Model" command.
Export a Google Earth file directly in KMZ format.
Share SketchUp models to the 3D Warehouse.

SketchUp Pro

In addition to everything you can do with SketchUp, using SketchUp Pro you can:

Export in additional 2D formats:
Portable Document Format (.pdf)
Encapsulated PostScript Format (.eps)
Epix (.epx)
AutoCAD (.dwg, .dxf)
Export 3D models in additional formats:
3DS (.3ds)
AutoCAD DWG (.dwg)
AutoCAD DXF (.dxf)
FBX (.fbx).
OBJ (.obj)
XSI (.xsi)
VRML (.vrml)
Export animations and walkthroughs as MOV with the Mac version of SketchUp, or export AVI files from the Windows version of SketchUp.

[amberroberts09]

This is very good blog and also very informative.